Hurricane Sandy- Part 3 (back in NJ!). . . and Thanksgiving

With work starting back Monday November 12th, we decided to get on the road Saturday to give us a whole day to get our lives back together before starting a new normal rhythm in our house, well in our landlords' loft anyway.  So bye bye Boston and hello 50 Valley St again but this time in the loft behind our house.  The cats still have to stay in the old house because our landlord doesn't want pet hair in his loft.  So to this day we feel like cat sitters and although we finally cleaned out our old bedroom upstairs so they could have a more comfortable/sunny place than the bathroom they still aren't living with us.  Sigh.  We are still very lucky to be living right next to where we were living.  Very often we find that we need something from "the old house" and can get it when feeding the cats.  If we lived in a place located by FEMA it would likely be one room in a hotel hours from where we need to be AND it wouldn't allow cats AND it wouldn't have a kitchen AND it wouldn't have laundry facilities.  So all and all our 2 bedroom loft with washer/dryer and kitchen/living space is a luxury.  

We should be able to move into our old place just before the new year (if Dec 21st 2012 doesn't actually turn out to be apocalyptic).  Here are some pictures of the damage:

This is the saddest part for me.  Hardly expecting even the floor to get damp, I (in what I felt was paranoia) decided to move all the bottom shelf photo albums, scrap books, year books and baby books to the couch. . . just in case.  Well here is the couch, which dutifully soaked up much of the 3.5 feet of water that came into the house, which is at least 3 feet above the ground.  The scrap books were. . . well. . . scrapped as they were "disintegrating" according to Dave who tediously took all the pictures out of my old school albums and air dried the pictures in what now amount to be a big curly pile of messy memories (all out of order and somewhat distorted).  I must let go of that nagging feeling:  why didn't I just carry them upstairs?  Luckily my other paranoia, the filing cabinet contents, fared a little better (I placed the stuff atop of the baby changing table, which floated around the room a bit and eventually landed in a different corner).  

Here is the water line on the door to our 1st floor bathroom.  

Should have taken out the trash before we evacuated although then I suppose this would have just been floating around outside somewhere.  A no win situation I suppose.  I still can't believe that all of our spices had to be thrown out, that drawer was above my waist, at around stove-top level!!

Here are all the ruined VHSs (background), luckily DVDs could just be wiped off.  Lots of board books got it and some toys too.  For this, I am just trying to see it as an opportunity towards furthering my dreams of minimalism.  Dave recounted all the places he had to empty water from including the pantry drawers, refrigerator "crisper" and the dryer among other places. 

This is our house with our junk waiting to be picked up.

and here is our new view of our old place (from behind, in the loft).  

One of our first meals in the loft (tiny kitchen, big Dave)

here is the living/eating space with an open-ceiling bedroom seen in the back right-hand side.  That is where Gavin sleeps.  With a dose of sarcastic hilarity I tell you that no one sleeps in that big room, which includes a queen-sized bed, except for Gavin.  It is a long story but lets just say we are finally getting sleep again. . . so long as we are not in there.  So we sleep in the other room in the full-sized bed where Mia also sleeps-on her twin mattress on the floor.  

That is how it is now anyway.  We were originally going to be the ones hosting Thanksgiving (for the Miller-Licon's and my parents) but seeing as how we have tighter quarters now AND we didn't want to turn right back around and go to Boston again, my parents ended up joining us for 2 weeks (11/17-12/1) so we wouldn't be alone for Thanksgiving and to help out while Dave was undergoing his CRUNCH time before his final PhD defense, which successfully occurred 11/30 (graduation is 12/15, pics to follow).  Unfortunately, Cookie had to be kenneled but I appreciate my parents choosing us over her and I was told she did fine especially considering it was her first time being kenneled.  

Here is a picture of Mia and I watching Chrarlie Brown's Thanksgiving, a first but I hope to make this an annual tradition.  We don't really have TV but this is our landlords and we were able to hook it up to our computer and get it from YouTube.  

Here is Dave wrestling Gavin and Mia, I just love watching them in action!  Gavin does this funny thing where he stands back and says, "wa, wa, wa" (as in walk?) and then goes charging at Dave!

Thanksgiving dinner (loft style)

followed by dessert (pumpkin/pecan pie)

The night after Thanksgiving it was about 8 nights before my parents had to leave and we decided it would be the first night of our Chanukah, which Dave and I preferred to share with Bubbe and PopPop, the "real" Jews ;)

Here I am reading the Menorah book to the kids

and here is Bubbe singing "Don't let the light go out" via an internet lyric's site

Mia waving hello to Hannukah (don't be confused by our dinner candelabra) 

Hurricane Sandy- Part 2 (Miller-Licon's)

     With the cats safely inside yet another basement, I went upstairs to say hello to my new home for the next (almost) 2 weeks.  I didn't know that yet though.  I arrived on a Thursday evening and as far as I knew, I would likely be called to go back to work that very Monday.  But at least it is a long weekend in a warm house with family we love.  The sleeping arrangements varied:  I started out with everyone in Jeremy's room (me and Mia on his twin and Gavin in a borrowed pack-n-play).  Although somehow Dave (6'3") and I managed to cuddle/sleep at Knox College in an extra-long twin somehow this just wasn't working with Mia (3" and change).  That paired with cousins wanting a sleep-over and we finally allowed Mia to sleep in Randall/Mattie's big room.  Just a simple bribe of morning pancakes if no craziness occurred and we were good to go.  Now this 11 people (and 3 animals) in one house thing gave Gavin a nasty habit of not sleeping through the night since I pretty much had to pacify him in any way possible whenever he made any noise in hopes that we can keep the house sleeping until at least 6am, which happened way less than we all had hoped.  Eventually, we banished ourselves to the basement but apparently overactive bladders upstairs still woke the crew up mighty early (whew! it wasn't all our fault).  

     Sleep deprivation coupled with boredom and close quarters left me close to tears one afternoon when "knock knock knock" it was DAVE!!  It had only been half a week but I was so happy to see him.  It is funny how tears look the same despite the emotion, which causes them.  He came bearing stories and pictures of our home and of NJ in general.  Stories of gas lines that took 4 hrs to get through, of gas rationing by license plate #s, of the church around the corner from us which, since the day after the storm (to this very day!!!) gives out clothes, toys, food, coffee/hot cocoa etc etc every day from morning to night, of a phone charging station at the town hall, of curfew cops and address checks to enter our town, and the list goes on.  He had his own stories about cleaning the house and drying things out as best he could.  Deciding what should be salvaged or tossed, rising with the sun and turning in when it got dark, with no electricity or warm water he emptied cabinets filled with water, swept trash sludge from the kitchen floor and ate the same thing day after day (canned pears, granola bar, PBR).  

     During our stay in Boston, the boys still had school and guys still had work and after a couple of days of cabin fever with Mia an amazing thing happened.    Harold called to say that there was an activity at Randall's preschool and Mia was invited.  After the activity, the director asked me if Mia would like to join Randall in his class so long as we were displaced out here, free of charge.  Mia was thrilled at this prospect and when I tried to say good-bye to her she was literally too busy with her art project to kiss me.  When I picked her up and the teachers described her as "chatty" I just knew she was happy/comfortable there because Mia will not talk if she is in any way uncomfortable with her surroundings.  I think she was just so happy to be playing with kids her age and to have a bit of structure in her day again.  Of course I was happy to have the time to help Matt around the house since having so many house guests made day to day business hard to stay on top of.

     After a week passed, I became nervous that the electricity in Highlands, NJ wouldn't be back before I was called to work but finally on Saturday Nov 10th, 9 days after our arrival and several hours after I was told I had to be back at work on Monday (11/12) we got word that the electricity was back.  Here are some shots of our time in Boston.

     

Bubbe, Gavin and Jeremy

Bubbe, PopPop and Cookie

making cookies

Sounds simple but this was a proud moment for me.  Everyone had been so rowdy that I thought I might be nuts to enlist their help in cookie making but it had the effect I was going for:  it focused us all on a common goal, that of sweets!  Everyone was great about taking turns as we went through the steps in the recipe.  They loved the part where they got to make thumb prints in the shortbread cookie balls and fill them with jelly

Randall and Mia, in a ball.

Gavin, in a boat (I think you're a little too big to sail that ship buddy!)

Lemonade

When someone, who shall remain nameless, accidentally put a laundry packet instead of a dishwasher packet in the dishwasher, Gavin took these lemons and made lemonade. . . or bubble soup.

FORT!

It was take a friend (cousin) to gymnastics class day. . . how perfect!! Mia had a blast :)

The Noreaster who thought it fun to pelt a bunch of storm-stricken East coasters who had no heat in their house.  Thankfully, we had warm shelter and coats and some of us ventured out all bundled up. . .

. . .others preferred to watch from inside

Wrestling with Dave is always good for some fun (and a workout!).  I am happy to report that Gavin is almost ready for this pastime.  He wrestles daddy at home and was very interested in watching but was a bit too uncoordinated still to stay in the thick of these tangles you see below:

I am not happy to report that for some reason it was easier to put Gavin forward facing for the drive home (I think it was easier to install [we don't have latch unfortunately] and we needed extra room for stuff) so although I prefer to wait until the rear facing maximum weight limit is reached (at 32 lbs he had 3 more pounds).  I know we CAN just turn him back but I'm certain he'd protest and I HATE installing car seats so. . . I think he's a forward facing dude and although he and Mia can't see each other as well, he likes the view. 

Next stop:  Highlands, NJ --loft living!